


the heart's overflow

by englishsummerrain



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Actors, F/F, Past Relationship(s), Pining, Rule 63
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-13
Updated: 2020-10-13
Packaged: 2021-03-08 02:07:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26987968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/englishsummerrain/pseuds/englishsummerrain
Summary: Jeno falls in love. The world keeps turning.
Relationships: Lee Jeno/Zhong Chen Le
Comments: 17
Kudos: 103





	the heart's overflow

**Author's Note:**

> this is for every kid who had that lightbulb moment that it was possible to kiss girls. god knows it took me long enough.

_The world digs a hole in your yard_

_ & it’s up to you to fill it, _

_up to you to find something useful_

_to do with your sadness_

\- Hieu Minh Nguyen 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


Jeno's back hurts. The car is small and she can't quite stretch out fully on the back seat, and the snow is still piled in banks on the sides of the empty highway. It’s still below zero, even if the sky is clear. Chenle had pulled over to take a fresh air break about ten minutes ago, and now she’s on top of Jeno, her skirt hitched up and her top pulled down to expose the black lace of her bra. Every time Jeno reaches up to put the hand that isn't knuckle deep inside of her on her hip she bats it away, telling her with a breathless gasp to stay still. 

Jeno can't have her. She's not hers to take. 

It's unfair. She's always been like this — ever since the day they'd met. Chenle the lead, Jeno the sidekick, swept up in her whirlwind. 

When they'd first met Chenle was still, by all public knowledge, dating Jaemin Na. They'd been together for three years at that point — their chemistry derailing the entire planned direction for the mini series they'd been working on and causing a mild cult following. They'd been a power couple — two women on the rise, showing up to every event arm in arm, always sure to never let one speak for the other — and always sure to give the camera a kiss. 

_Publicly_ Jaemin was still dating Chenle. Privately, four months ago Jaemin had packed her bags and moved back to New York. 

"Maybe it's not the right time," Chenle had said, offering Jeno the wine bottle she'd been drinking straight out of the neck of. 

Jeno had refused the drink, but kept the company.

It was a boring film for both of them — a vaguely melancholy drama that had the both of them playing two sisters who had flown the coop. One that by the end of it Jeno was beginning to consider joining Chenle in her wine consumption habit. Jeno's agent had said it was right up her alley — and it was, she'd just neglected to properly read the script and realise how bad it was. Chenle had been the shining star in that regard — an absolute riot considering she was almost certainly bone tired coming out of both a serious relationship and filming a crime drama that had seemed to have nearly broken her. 

(The Golden Globe she'd received for her role in it sat on her mantlepiece in her LA apartment. Jeno had picked it up and Chenle had taken it from her hands, set it back down and kissed her.)

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


Jeno should have known it was the end from the second she'd met her, emerging from her trailer with the pale dawn light kissing the sharp ridge of her cheekbones. Her dressing gown made her look like a fluffy marshmallow, and her hair was all wispy, fried from the amount of bleach the stylists had dumped on it. 

"You on a wine run?" Jeno had asked her, because off set she seemed to have had a bottle permanently in her right hand. She'd raised an eyebrow, one hand still on the doorframe of her trailer. 

"You buying?"

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


Jeno hisses, Chenle's fingers still cold from the September air as she cups Jeno's breast and takes her nipple into her mouth. Her other hand is between Jeno's legs and they're jammed together in Chenle's bed, rain drumming on the windows, knees knocking together, heat pooling in Jeno's belly.

It keeps happening like this. They keep finding each other. Or maybe Jeno seeks her out, she's not really sure. All she knows is that Chenle is gorgeous and hot and the way she eats Jeno out makes her feel like her head is in the clouds. She presses her tongue at her clit while they're on the couch together in the dressing room, reaching her hand between the heat of Jeno's thighs until she's clenching around her.

Other times _Jeno_ will eat her out until her jaw is sore, and Chenle will be relentless — pushing her head back down onto her, making her drink her in until her thighs seem to quiver of their own accord, her wetness dripping all over her chin and the heat in her stomach like a wildfire, every part of her aching with desire so viciously Jeno wants to sob when Chenle tells her to come for her.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


"I bought you a gift," Jeno says, stepping out of the elevator and rummaging through her night bag to find the wine she'd picked up for Chenle on the way over. 

"Get in my fucking apartment first," she says, grabbing her wrist and tugging her through her front door. "You absolute dumbass." 

The door shuts with a click and Chenle reaches to turn the stereo blasting Taylor Swift down to a level that's less 'teenage breakup' and more 'fully grown professional actress'. If Chenle could hear Jeno's thoughts she's sure she'd call her a buzz kill. 

"Sorry," she says. "Didn't know you hated the hall so much." 

"More like I'm letting all the heat out and don't want the neighbours to see me letting Jeno Lee into my apartment with a bottle of wine." 

"Oh, right," Jeno says. Of course. They're not dating. There's nothing to it. They just fuck, sometimes. When Jeno isn't in Seattle, or when their schedules align, or somewhere, at some award show, Chenle forcing Jeno against the wall of a bathroom stall as she hitches her blood red dress up and pushes her panties to the side, pressing her fingers inside of her and murmuring about how wet she is.

Jeno screws her eyes shut and takes a deep breath, willing herself to make small talk before she even thinks about touching her.

When she opens her eyes again Chenle is staring at her, eyebrows raised. She'd dyed her hair back black in the fall and cut off all the split ends, and it barely touches her shoulders now, parted at the middle and falling in soft waves. 

"What?" Jeno asks. 

"Nothing," she says. "You bought me wine?" 

She rummages through her bag and produces the bottle — one of Chenle's favourite kinds of red, and one she'd seen her chug on set back when the break up stress had hit its peak.

"This is good, right?" 

"Oh, Jeno," she says, taking it from her hands with a smile. "If you want to get in my pants, you're doing it right." 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


Jeno fucks her on her back that night. Slow and soft, a long sigh pulled from her throat as Jeno slides into her. Sheets messy around them, her skin soft beneath her hands. Her tits are mesmerising, jumping with every thrust of the toy inside her, and Chenle moans, hips arching up into Jeno's touch as she rubs at her clit, relishing the noises that come pulled from her gorgeous lips, the pleas for Jeno to fuck her faster.

In bed, afterwards, after she's ordered Jeno to pour her a glass of wine (high class tonight, not drinking from the bottle in a way that belies her small town roots), she runs her finger around the rim of the glass, still naked, heater blasting warm air on her skin. 

She's so fucking beautiful. She makes Jeno want to go absolutely mad, if she's honest. Those pink, plump lips, those cheekbones, the draw of her shoulders, her fucking _tits._ Perfectly sized to fit in the palm of Jeno's hands, dark nipples that seem to be a shortcut to making Chenle writhe beneath her. Jeno could happily spend hours with her boobs in her mouth — making Chenle whine and beg for her, teasing her until she's the one who breaks for once.

Jeno is obsessed with her in every way. Every part of her. The way she moves. The way she laughs. The way she tells the man who asks her to smile on her morning walk to fuck off. The way she glares death at Jeno when it's nine am and she suggests they go out for breakfast. 

She has a will of iron and a fistful of stars in her lungs, and when she speaks she breathes sparks, like a dragon guarding her hoard. She's talking about taking Jeno on her arm to the Oscars. She's also talking about fucking Renjun Huang in a tone of complete disinterest. 

Renjun Huang. First openly transgender actress to win a major acting Academy Award. First openly LGBT person of Asian descent to win _any_ kind of Academy Award. Chenle had said her name with an aloof tone, like she didn't even care. _Yeah, I fucked Renjun last week, and_ _then we ate takeout in a hotel bed._

It's infuriating how much Jeno loves it. Chenle's eyes glaze over sometimes when men talk to her, like she lacks the emotional energy to continue. She has a resting bitch face that has gotten her in trouble more than once, and Jeno loves knowing that below it a beautiful mind is ticking, an artisan clock with gears of gold.

"Are you listening to me?" she asks, one eyebrow raised.

"Of course."

"What did I just say?" 

Jeno doesn't answer. She doesn't know what she just said — she just knows she was lost in her. 

"You're beautiful," she says, instead. Chenle laughs. 

She's still naked, sheets pooling around her waist. She throws her head back and laughs, and when she looks at Jeno again it's with a fondness, soft around the edges like the hazy glow of the desert in the midsummer.

"Thank you," she says. 

Her skin is warm beneath Jeno's fingers, goosebumps swelling. Her nipples harden under her touch and she leans into Jeno, miles of skin and star maps of moles, tattoos Jeno traces with her tongue. She presses a kiss to the back of her neck and slides a hand down her front, reaching down between her legs to find her warmth, still wet from where she'd fucked her before.

"Jeno," Chenle sighs. Jeno circles her pointer around her clit, still teasing her nipple with her other hand, lips pressed against the skin behind her ear. Wisps of her hair tickle Jeno's cheeks and she rubs at her until she's jerking under her touch, whining and gasping, her chest heaving again as she shudders and all her muscles tighten. 

"More," she says, still breathless. 

It's always more. 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


"Jesus Christ," Renjun says, letting a mouthful of peach scented smoke coil from her nostrils. "You're literally in love with her." 

"I'm not in love with her," Jeno mumbles, even though she knows it's a lie.

Renjun laughs. A cackle, the crack of a whip in the empty car park. Her hair is tied up in a loose bun and her clothes are baggy and stained with hot chip grease and iced coffees and she looks like she's crawled out of hell — like she's about to bring to realisation Jeno's worst nightmares. 

Her best realities, too. 

"I don't think she's over Jaemin," Jeno says. The way Chenle still talks about her makes Jeno wonder. Makes her unsure how she'll ever measure up. Chenle loves with fierceness, like a burning arrow dividing the heavens, like every bone in her body was born for this. Jeno doesn't know if she can take that. She doesn't know if she can ever be what Jaemin was.

"Yeah?" Renjun says. The air is cold and crisp, and she takes another hit of her vape. "Maybe she is still in love with her. Maybe not. Doesn't mean she isn't ready to love again." 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


Jeno wraps up filming in January. Chenle goes on holiday to the Maldives, coming back a week before award season, skin tan, hair wind kissed. She goes to the Golden Globes on Renjun's arm, dressed in stunning red, her neckline reaching to her belly button and still not enough to steal the show from Renjun's gown, floor length, gold and blood and jade, dark eyeshadow, a pride in her heritage. In the things that made her who she was.

Neither of them are nominated. Jeno's ex, Jisung Park, wins best supporting actress in a television series, and Jeno's surprised when the bitterness she'd expected to feel is pride instead. She's surprised when the scar on her heart doesn't ache. She's most surprised when she's the one who leads the standing ovation, whooping for the girl who had broken her heart. 

Time heals. Glittering lights, red carpet. Chenle and Renjun are two rows in front of her and as she sits down Chenle turns back to look at her, a strange look on her face. 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


At the Academy Awards Jaemin wins best actress. She dedicates her speech to “all the gay girls in the world and everyone who goes to Sunday church and prays to God that they wake up a woman”, and promptly bursts into tears.

Jeno has never hated her, but seeing her wipe her eyes and hold the award close to her heart, she begins to understand why Chenle might have loved her.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


"You beat me by three years, Renjun," Jaemin says, a glass of champagne grasped tightly between her liquid gold nails. "Second openly LGBT Asian Actress doesn't quite have the same ring to it."

"Just be grateful you won. The Academy probably thinks giving two trans girls awards is enough to tick the diversity quota for the next twenty years," Renjun says. She's drinking red. The colour of thick blood, her gown snow white. 

Chenle drinks red, too. Her arm is around Jeno's waist and it fits perfectly. 

"I am grateful," Jaemin says. She hasn't stopped smiling since she stepped off the stage, supernova bright, no diamond in the world able to compare. She's dripping in gold, strands in her hair, eyes gilted like a seaside sunset. She clutches the statuette to her side and it fits perfectly, too. Like she had been born with the award in hand.

"I'm proud of you," Chenle says. Her grip tightens on Jeno's waist. "So proud of you, babe." 

  
  
  
  
  
  


Jeno takes off her heels in the limo. She ends up in Chenle's lap, and then knuckle deep inside her, biting her lip and panting as Chenle comes on her fingers, leather sweaty beneath her palms, traffic lights winking around her. 

They're supposed to be out of the hotel at ten the next morning, but Chenle calls the front desk at 9:50 with Jeno's head between her legs and extends their stay another day. 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


How do you tell someone you're in love with them when you're so sure they don't want to hear it? How do you tell them you want to build a life with them? 

You know they've been burned before — that their heart still aches for another. And you know this too — that they're the most beautiful thing you've ever seen. You want every piece of them, not just their body but their mind and soul, their quick wit and their burning heart. 

Chenle presses a long kiss to Jeno's lip, hands cupping her cheeks. The Seattle winter turns to spring and the flowers bloom around them, and Jeno never wants to say goodbye. 

A want isn't enough. The world keeps turning. The seasons keep changing. Chenle is her own person, and Jeno understands that. She accepts that. She has no choice. 

Her coat sweeps around her ankles, last vestiges of dirty puddles still lingering on the footpath. She looks back at Jeno and smiles. 

"I'll text you when I land," she says. 

"Of course," Jeno says, nodding. The taxi pulls up to the kerb and Jeno tries to indicate as much, but Chenle doesn't look. She bites her lip, eyes still locked with Jeno's. 

The taxi honks its horn, just as Chenle walks back up the stairs and plants another kiss on Jeno's lips. 

"For good luck," she murmurs.

Sunlight breaks the clouds, and Chenle is painted gold. 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


On the bench is a box. Jeno doesn't notice it for a while — its unassuming brown cardboard blending in with the unorganised disaster of her countertop. There's a half eaten loaf of artisan bread (Jisung's favourite) that gets placed on top of it, a receipt for Chenle's favourite wine, her brother's sweater. Home is where the heart is. Chenle says it's because she's a Taurus she likes to spend so much time in her apartment. Jeno thinks it's because she likes it when it's quiet. 

Chenle is a Saggitarius. Jeno doesn't know what that means, but Google told her it meant she liked freedom, and that Jeno wasn't compatible with her. Jeno decides she doesn't believe in astrology after that.

She notices the box when she's going through her bi-weekly clean up. She has an armful of grocery bags and a poetry collection her agent had said she'd like (she did, but she'd never finished it) clutched in her right hand, and it clatters to the floor, the right corner denting. It comes to rest to reveal Chenle's handwriting on the bottom, and she dumps the rest of the things she's holding on the tiles and picks it up.

(Chenle does that. Smashes through and makes Jeno put everything else on pause. Demands her attention without even trying. It's part of being in love, she realises. The want to make the world stop for someone, place it on the hold just to spend another second with them. Like the thousand times she's seen Chenle before aren't enough.)

They're earrings. Jeno doesn't wear much jewellery, just her mother's wedding ring on her left pointer. They're earrings and they're simple — rich gold, teardrop shaped with tiny iridescent hearts. Perfectly matched to Jeno's skin tone. She places them back in the velvet and turns the box over again. 

' _I know you don't wear earrings, but they reminded me of you,'_ it says. ' _I hope they remind you of me, too.'_

Jeno's not sure what to make of it. She sits on the floor and the spring rain falls outside, until her ass is numb and Bongshik runs circles around her, glancing hopefully towards where she keeps the food. 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


Jeno doesn't ask Chenle what it means. They meet in a hotel in Atlanta, Georgia sun shining bright, and Jeno swims in the bedsheets. They kiss and make promises Jeno tries to remember the next morning, but when she searches she's already written them over with the shape of Chenle's body, fragments of conversation that sound like her laugh on repeat.

The shower drums down. Jeno doesn't want to blink — to look away for a second. The water trickles down the flat space between Chenle's breasts, along the path of one of her tattoos, a tiger leaping for the sunlight. Falling down her navel, following where Jeno's fingers make a highway. A towel hangs around her shoulders. She tastes clean and bright, and there's wine and a box of chocolates on the bench. 

Jeno doesn't want to close her eyes, but she does anyway. Chenle's naked skin is damp against hers, palm against her cheek like the heat of a dying star, all the cosmos wrapped up in the body of this girl she would follow to hell and back.

"I missed you," Jeno says. Chenle's thumb rests against her hip, pressed into the bone, every stroke of her fingers sending tremors of heat through her. 

"Yeah," Chenle says. "I missed you, too." 

Her touch glows, dipped in phosphorescence, fingerprints all over Jeno's aching heart. She slips her hand between Jeno's legs and Jeno sighs, kissing her, sucking her lower lip into her mouth, pressing down against her fingers.

Pressing her into the bed. Pressing their bodies together, their tongues, tracing the curve of her hips. Jeno kissing down her chest, the same path the water had taken.

The taste of Chenle in her mouth. The way she writhes, hips arching off the mattress, sweet and hot, wet on her tongue.

The tears Jeno cries in the lobby aren't as sweet, but she thinks it's her god given right at this point. She's a grown woman. She can do what she wants. 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


Jeno films all summer. Jeno thinks about Chenle all summer, too. She’s in France, and Jeno is still in Seattle, and when they call each other and the sun peeks through the windows of Jeno's trailer Chenle is eating her lunch — a loaded croissant she happily holds up to her phone. 

"It's fun, then?" Jeno says, as Chenle speaks about the dog they’d had on set. Chenle wipes a flake of pastry from the corner of her mouth and shrugs. 

"It'd be better if you were here." 

"What does that mean?" Jeno asks, her heart thudding. 

"It just means you make everything better."

There’s something in her smile Jeno doesn’t quite know — a trick of the light, maybe. Something hopeful — something Jeno clings to, grasping it in her palm like it’s a compass that might lead her to Chenle’s heart.

"Wait," Jeno says, after their meandering conversation is interrupted by a passerby. "You speak French?" 

"The movie is in French," Chenle says, laughing. 

Jeno stares at her. Another part of her, unfurled, the petal of a rose. She looks beautiful, all the lights of the streets of Nice twinkling behind her.

"You're incredible," Jeno says. 

If Chenle was following along by now she'd know it meant I love you. She’d know it meant that Jeno didn't want to be apart from her any longer, that every breath not shared was wasted. That when Jeno was with her the world fell away, their bodies wrapped in a golden light that illuminated the once invisible thread tying them together.

She doesn’t know, of course. Jeno has tried to bring it up, but her tongue always fails her when it comes to words, and maybe Chenle isn’t really interested, anyway.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


Jeno’s film is slated for December release. Chenle’s will debut at Cannes. Jeno rewatches Sunshine Bells — the first film they’d made together — with the intent of actually paying attention, but she just ends up rewinding the scene where Chenle’s character gets eaten out on the couch and masturbating to it instead.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


Chenle comes back to Seattle for the winter. She’s a good cook — Jeno had never realised this — and she cooks Christmas dinner for Jeno when she decides not to go back to Korea to see her parents. They FaceTime instead, Chenle’s head on her shoulder, and her eomma tells her to hold on to that girl — that she’s precious. She tells Jeno how happy she looks, and wishes her well, and instead of the flame sputtering out and leaving ash on her tongue it burns brilliant inside of her, a glow that reaches all the way to her skin.

“I like your family,” Chenle says, almost horizontal, curled up like a cat with her head in Jeno’s lap. The rain lashes the windows, and the roads start to flood. “Your mom seems nice. I’d like to meet her one day. For real.”

The TV is on mute. It’s playing Christmas programming — same old, same old. Warm lights and Santa’s elves dancing around the green and red holly, presents in hand. Jeno wishes she had mistletoe, then realises she doesn’t need to ask to kiss Chenle. She never has. She just needs to lean down and press a kiss to her forehead, then another to her lips as Chenle turns, and another, and another, Chenle sitting up, crawling into her lap and bracketing her face with her arms, her sweater soft where Jeno pulls it over her head.

“You want to meet my family?” Jeno asks, and it’s almost breathless. Chenle’s eyes meet hers and she tilts her head slightly, like a confused kitten. 

“Why wouldn’t I?”

Another kiss — the question almost forgotten when Chenle’s tongue swipes across Jeno’s bottom lip and she slips her hand under her shirt, cupping her breast. 

“Isn’t that a bit…” Jeno starts, so unsure how to finish it.

“I’m holding your tit right now and thinking about putting my tongue down your throat. I think we’re past that point.”

Jeno laughs. There’s Chenle — there’s the girl she loves. Blunt, direct. Smacking through the wall Jeno had haplessly built like the bricks were made of foam. 

And maybe Jeno was wrong. “You want to meet my parents?” She repeats. Chenle presses another kiss to her lips and pushes up her jumper more, exposing the bare skin of her stomach to the air. 

“Yes? You’re my girlfriend? Isn’t that what I'm supposed to do?”

Jeno doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t tell Chenle she was wrong — she doesn’t care for what came before. What comes after. She cups her face in her hands and kisses her until she can’t breathe, and when Chenle slips her hand under her waistband Jeno tells her to turn the television off, because she really doesn’t want to get off with The Santa Clause playing in the background.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


This award season Chenle is on her arm, and though she has no nominations Jeno still feels like she outshines her in every way. At the Academy Awards they sit together, and Chenle is in misty black— gold heels, gold nails, the straps of her gown _glued_ to her breasts to stop them slipping off. 

“Show off,” Jeno had said, as they’d sat in the limo together. Chenle had poked her tongue out.

“Did you expect anything less?”

“Not at all,” Jeno had said, smiling. “You’re the most beautiful girl in the world. You can dress how you want.”

Chenle had rolled her eyes and leaned over to kiss her. “For good luck.”

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


Sitting in the seats together. The hall hushed. Envelope in hand, and everything is gold and red.

“And the Oscar goes to…”

It’s funny how often Jeno wishes for time to stop — for every moment she has with Chenle to last forever — because right now she wishes everything would move forward. That it didn’t feel like it was trapped in the balance, like a raindrop held in suspension, her breath trapped in her lungs. Chenle’s nails dig into her skin and Jeno glances at her, takes the soft smile she flashes her and locks it inside of her. 

“Jeno Lee!”

The world slams into motion, and she can’t even stand. She can’t even move. 

She doesn’t need to. Chenle wraps her arms around her and kisses her anyway.

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> you can find me on [twitter ](https://twitter.com/dongrenle)and [cc.](https://curiouscat.me/goldhorn)


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